'cause it's hard to see from where I'm standin'

I can’t believe shit like this today gets published in the Times. To paraphrase, “We yuppies, despite being responsible for the gentrification of the neighborhood, are complaining about how more yuppies are moving in and totally destroying its character. Also, our view.” Thankfully, some are pointing out said bullshit.

But then, it’s not exactly new. Any argument on Brownstoner or City Data tends to flow like that, with some especially ripe diatribes between hipsters and yuppies:

hipster: “So sick of these Park slope people . I would rather live in one of these Carroll gardens rentals much closer to manhattan and i feel like this is a tiny village in europe.”

yuppie: “Last time I was in Europe, there weren’t a bunch of goombah’s running around whistling at every chick walking by like they do in CG.”

hipster: “Yea but you keep forgeting about all the french and the other Europeans moving to Carroll Gardens.”

breeder: “Is Brownstoner in decline or something? Why on earth is there a feature about a rental property, for God’s sake? A *rental*! I thought this was a serious blog.”

“I’m more authentic!” “No, I’m more authentic!” Fuck the both of you, whitebread yuppie scum! Nobody cares which overpriced realtor’s district has more boutique fusion/sushi bars when you’re paying twice Manhattan rates for the fucking F train.

whitey: “Project buildings all over the place, random acts of violence, crappy bodegas, thugs hanging out on the corner. Thats what comes to my mind when I think of Spanish Harlem.”

guido: “Not to be rascist [sic] or anything but I always thought the worst of Harlem was the black part…”

bystander: “why would the black sections of harlem be worse than spanish sections? because they’re black?”

guido: “Just my opinion growing up in the west Bronx which houses a large amount of hispanics, the area is poor but the areas with the higher crime are usually more towards the central and south…or predominantly black areas. […] Washington Heights/Inwood which are Dominican neighborhoods have a lower crime rate than Spanish Harlem which is a Puerto Rican neighborhood (or used to be)

Anybody know why this is the case?”

West Bronx, you say? You don’t perchance mean Riverdale, do you? Honkey.

guido: These are poverty levels in the city… each zip has about a 75% Dominican population. These are the ghetto thats point blank. […] I had to watch my back everywhere because there were like 1000 kids out.

honkey: Nothing against Dominicans. I have lived in Inwood for about 4 months now and […] It is just very frustrating to live in America and feel like your being taken over.

Forgetting, of course, that they’ve been there fifty years and you’ve been there four months.

I was beginning to resent the NYTimes for printing this article on the new Times Square Mall (and this letter responding to it – landscape architects should stick to their own goddamn turf and off of urban planners’ and sociologists’, but that’s another pet peeve of mine) and had an entire diatribe about hating the semi-public tourist-trap malls that the city, in all its orgiastic development, has fallen head over heels for instead of policies that matter to the hoi polloi, but then I saw this piece, and all I could think to say was,

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA

RUN, MOTHERFUCKERS, RUUUN!

NYTimes, you have redeemed yourself. For now. At any rate, back to the rant:

If the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle is any indication, the concept of “semi-public space” is about as anathema to city life as the word “housing project” or “gentrification.” Bloomberg’s legacy (other than breaking the back of the UFT and naming the Mets’ stadium after a failed bank) might very well be the utter and complete lack of any and all regulation again wanton development for close to a decade. New York has always torn down and built up, sure, but New York has always had strict rules on architecture and urban planning, until now.

And like most Gilded Ages, with the heedless development by the rich and richer, we have entire swaths of the city practically walled off from the rest: Condo developments on the Far West Side, gated settlements in Bayside, and hipster colonies in “East Williamsburg.” The more egregious developments might as well be in Kabul, they’re so bunkered from the city proper: Underground parking, private streets (I’m looking at you, Riverside Boulevard, and your retractible car barriers), doormen; anything to recreate the suburban enclave in urbania.

Time Warner Center destroyed what was a public space – with street market, no less – and turned it into a “semi-public” space, which means a public space closed off to poor people. I remember the hullabaloo when it was being planned: They planned the entrance to the 59th St. subway station to be outside the mall lobby for the specific reason that if it exited directly into the space, they would have to keep it open to the general public – not just the public that wore Abercrombie.

Likewise, I’ve nothing against closing streets in Times Square, except for (the obvious and) the fact that the only people who seem to benefit are the tourists, and I think we’ve given the tourists quite enough of the city: Anybody who’s seen the condos on the block of the former CBGB’s can attest to just how much the city has lost to visitors. So it bugged me that the Times reporter writing this anecdotal story on what is essentially his back yard (after all, it’s called Times Square), reported that,

Despite reassurances from the Transportation Department that the changes would create a greener, more pedestrian-friendly city, some critics of the plan worried that it would sap the square of its chaotic energy. Others, apparently nostalgic for the seediness of the 1970s version of the square, denounced it as another step in New York’s transformation from the world’s greatest metropolis to a generic tourist trap.

Well, I’m happy to report that, a day after the stretch of Broadway between 42nd and 47th Streets was closed to cars, the soul of Times Square remains intact. The neon still sparkles. Tourists still wander around bewildered. The whiff of last night’s junk food still hangs in the air.

because it misses the fucking point. This still isn’t the Times Square of the New York musical, or the Times Square of the seedy underworld, or even the Times Square of the public spectacle; this is the Times Square of the fucking pleasantcuriosity, which is exactly the sort of glossy pastiche everybody who decries the Disneyfication of the city is complaining about: Token gestures to a middle class mentality while sweeping the uncontrollable* under the rug so that the consumers won’t get too skittish. It’s not even like they’re using the space for anything but stupid lawn chairs, making it feel like a hipster’s thesis paper more than public policy.

Yeah you, yuppie scum. You spoiled over-privileged waste of society’s time, money and space. You denied someone with an actual goal in life from a higher education by simply being there and you have the gall to feel sorry for yourself in your complete lack of foresight, too.

The Times did another soft piece about a yuppie with crutches that basically made a blog with a witty name concerning his tribulations on the subway. I think a better name for it might be “whiny dude with a blog dot com,” but that’s just me.

Premise: He’s “too soft-spoken” to ask for a seat, so takes pics of strangers with his iPhone to e-shame them into volunteering them.

Irony: Law says you have to ask if you want the seat, and if that’s too much of a social faux pas in the mean city, then what, pray tell, is unsolicited photographing?

But this reminds me of a city planning thought about what makes cities sociable. I say this as someone who’s grown up in a wild and wooly neighborhood, but a hood that really does embody the word “neighborhood.” That is to say, I know my neighbors. A large city is a den of anonymity – if but for the sanity of those in it, as evidenced by the passive-aggression of this yuppie here – but it’s still an incredible bevy of interpersonal connection and assumed protocol.

Neighborhoods change people all the time but require an outside force to change character: New laws, new money, a new dynamic imposed on the order. Redlining, gentrification, etc. I mention this because I think the underlying problem with crutchboy here is something of a citywide gentrification thing. The new buildings going up on the Far West Side, Long Island City, our guy’s “East Williamsburg*,” condos abound; they all have two common elements. One, they’re in the middle of nowhere. Two, they have no connection with anything.

Doormen lobbies and drive-in parking garages – the sidewalks are as empty when the buildings are full as they are when they’re still being built. Along with this is their downmarket cousins, the Hipster colonies where young whites play in neighborhoods where they assiduously avoid the locals – and oftentimes each other. The Bush boom heralded iPods on the subways and an inflated sense of self. The irony, of course, is that were he not the one in crutches, he’d probably ignore those who were.

Summed up with a nice exchange outside my window from the opposing co-op one Saturday night to the street:

“It’s 1am! Could you stop playing that fucking music!”

“I’ve been here 40 years! Eat shit!”

I guess what I’m thinking is that his views – overcrowded trains, all-pervasive asininity – are an inference of the breakdown of a social bubble (yuppiedom) in a contracting economy. NYC is taking itself back.

The state government is deadlocked because suburbanites don’t like taxes (but certainly like their road and utility subsidies, don’t they?), the MTA is cutting service and raising fares to ridiculous lengths (and the comments on that article hurt my faith in humanity), and people are again antsy about violent crime.

For my part, the mood is prevailing on spring student aggression and teacher dispair. Fights have been breaking out on a daily basis in high traffic hallways, two computers were stolen today by students who managed to get their hands on a master key which, along with other petty thefts, foments a possible crime wave a la about this time last year, where teacher laptops and school equipment were being snatched left and right for two weeks of insanity.

I was in a hardware store picking up padlocks so I could secure my equipment now that the door locks were compromised, and when giving the rundown to answer the cashier’s inquiries, the lady next to me broke out in laughter.

“I’m glad I’m not sending my kid to your school!” said this Asian yuppie in high heels.

That’s okay. No other white or Asian mother does. Not one. There’s a reason they call it a ghetto: Nobody who has a choice stays. It’s beginning to feel like the 70s or the 90s in sense that yuppies are having misgivings about the city again and locals are hunkering down.

The thing I hope for at least in the NYCDoE, given the frustrating nature of the current crop and the limited prospects they’re looking at is the promise that we’re only holding the fort until the Bloomberg generation – ie, the generation of students that grew up entirely within the agency that is known as Dead On Education as compared to Bored Of Education – is old enough for high school. Big hope.

In a nutshell

Words of an urban indian. Musings on the nature of civilized society, city forms and bureaucratic processes, class and race consciousness, complaining, ranting and more ranting, along with whatever the hell else piques one's interest nowadays.

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To quote H. L. Mencken, "The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office."